Letters from the Synod – 2024: #5

Imagine that, in 1939, there were synods of the sort meeting now. Imagine further that Synod-1939 had spent a month arguing about one or two tweaks in canon law, the vesture of clerics, and the organization of dioceses in missionary countries, while ignoring the prevalence of eugenics in the thinking of many of the world’s great and good, various raging nationalisms, the rape of Nanking, the Ukrainian terror famine, the T-4 German program euthanizing the disabled, and the massive outbreak of anti-Semitism in Germany that had just resulted in the pogrom known as the Kristallnacht. What would history have ultimately said about such an exercise in ecclesiastical self-referentiality? Today’s essays caution against the unhappy possibility that Synod-2024 may suffer such a fate, decades from now, if it continues down a path of self-absorption driven by campaigns for institutional and theological “paradigm shifts."